Friday, November 24, 2006

What I've been up to

No good, people, no good! Well, that might not necessarily be true. However, here are some pics.

First up, the Urban Bubble Scarf from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. Ain't it the coolest? This is made of their Kidmo yarn, which is the seriously soft, wonderful and beautiful yarn that I mentioned in my last post. The scarf is knit flat, and then the Japanese shibori method is used to alter the fabric. In this case, the kit came with a couple hundred wooden balls, which I snuggled into the flat fabric of the scarf and held them in place with rubber bands. Then, I tossed it into a zippered pillow case, then tossed THAT into Cece's washing machine on HOT a couple of times (and pretended not to be nervous), and, Hooray! Bubbles! I must say that it shortened a lot more than the pattern suggested that it would, but I had luckily made it a lot longer than the pattern suggested I should, so it all worked out for the best. Ain't it cute? (I did create a rotated picture, but Blogger did not like it and angrily refused to accept it. Dumb Blogger.)Next, my first Merino Lace Sock. At some point, I will order another skein of it, and another skein of the not quite matching ball... but not yet. I have included a top and side view. I liked knitting this first sock a lot- there are three different, interesting panels of 12 rows- not unusually memorizable, which kept it interesting.I think you can kind of see how the pattern from the front is repeated down the back of the leg and down the heel. It is totally cool.

And today, I did some very exciting and fun stuff at my friend Kathy's house. She is blogless, so her name is not highlighted. Kathy is the queen of making interesting and beautiful crafts, and owns every craft thing imaginable. She is my polymer clay benefactress- she decided she wasn't interested in polymer clay any more, so she gave me all of her clay, tools, and everything. It was awesome. (as a side note, I will photograph some of the stuff I've been doing with that at some point. Fer sure.) So anyway, she recently set herself up with lampworking and precious metal clay stuff- the works. So she invited a few people over today to have a play day! I made a couple of lampwork glass beads, although my first (and most awesome) one exploded. These things happen in life. I saved the pieces, but it is not much to see at this point! I also made a couple of things with the precious metal clay, and here is a finished pendant that I made, strung with some nice beads. The silver polished up so shiny that it was hard to get a picture of, so I have a 'bright' and a 'dull' picture below:The bright picture shows the accurate color, but the dull picture shows the detail on the pendant. The silver is mixed in with clay, so you can roll it out, stamp it and cut it to your heart's content, as long as you work fast- it dries out very fast. Then, you fire it in the kiln, polish it up, and bam. Pendant! The other thing that I made is currently in an 'emergency... how do I fix it" state. I choose not to say any more than that at this point.

So, I have tried six times now to include some pics of some of my polymer clay stuff, but again, Blogger is being a poophead. Growl. Well, eventually, it will work out.